The Twins are living dangerously when it comes to injuries early in spring training.
In just the last week and a half, they’ve had three of their most important players walk off the field with soreness and require MRIs to assess the situation. Pablo Lopez got the dreaded news that he’d need season-ending UCL surgery, which put an immediate damper on the Twins’ outlook. Fortunately, the team’s two most recent injury scares have been nothing more than that — temporary scares.
Joe Ryan’s MRI for lower back tightness showed nothing but inflammation, which means he’ll be fine for Opening Day. And on Friday morning, an MRI for Royce Lewis came back clean, according to The Athletic’s Dan Hayes. The Twins’ third baseman had been scratched from Thursday’s spring game after experiencing some tightness in his right side while running the bases before the game.
Royce Lewis’s MRI came back clean. #MNTwins breathe a sigh of relief.
— DanHayesMLB (@DanHayesMLB) February 27, 2026
This is a big season for Lewis, who is hoping to bounce back from a disappointing 2025 and also ideally stay on the field for close to a full season for the first time in his career.
Injuries have plagued the former No. 1 overall pick throughout his career, from two ACL tears early in this decade to all kinds of strains of his oblique, hamstring, and quad muscles. Since making his MLB debut in 2022, he’s had eight different stints on the injured list. Over the past three years, Lewis has played in 246 of the Twins’ 486 regular season games (50.6 percent).
In between the injuries, Lewis got off to an electrifying start to his career, hitting 36 home runs in his first 116 healthy games. That included four homers in six games in the Twins’ mini playoff run in 2023. But then, midway through the 2024 season, Lewis went ice cold. He proceeded to hit only three home runs in his next 84 games, spanning the end of ’24 and the first half of last season.
Royce Lewis in the 2023 postseason | Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images
Lewis did bounce back a bit down the stretch of the 2025 campaign, recording a .732 OPS with 11 homers and 12 stolen bases in his final 63 contests. His slow start still made it easily the worst statistical season of his career (.671 OPS), although it was at least somewhat encouraging that he played in 100-plus games for the first time.
Now Lewis, who turns 27 in June, is looking to prove that he’s still a huge part of the Twins’ future. He’s off to a solid start in spring training, going 2 for 5 with a long home run and a stolen base.
Royce Lewis smacks this ball PAST THE BERM! 🌴 pic.twitter.com/PsZFqOopNA
— MLB (@MLB) February 21, 2026
The first step towards success for Lewis, as always, is staying on the field. Hopefully this injury scare will be his last one for a while.